Leaving the Sea: Stories by Ben Marcus Page B

It was like being hugged by a machine. He held his breath and waited for it to end.
    “Oh, you,” she kept saying. “I missed you, you know.”
    He didn’t answer.
    “
You know
?” She nudged him.
    Julian said they should probably start walking before they died. He didn’t want to die in Germany.
    They walked through the icy streets of Düsseldorf, hugging the Rhine, stopping to sit and shiver on a cold metal bench at the Rheinturm.
    Julian took Hayley through Old Town, along Carlsplatz, pointing out cultural zones with the indifference of a local. And he lied, effortlessly, about places he’d not even seen, like the Kunstakademie—looking at art was the last thing he’d wanted to do—even inventing a day trip to Cologne. Which he took last Wednesday? Or maybe Thursday? Hayley beamed up at him, her brave and adventurous American boyfriend, snuggling into his coat as they walked.
    Hayley kept saying that she couldn’t believe she was here. I mean, could
he,
she asked Julian? Could he believe it? And he disappointed her by saying, that, well, yeah, he could, because she was supposed to come, wasn’t she?
    “I know, but it’s crazy, right?” she said.
    Julian steered Hayley clear of Müllerhaus, but he kept it in his sights, a secret back door he could fall through. He didn’t interrogate her on her whereabouts these past two weeks, on the matter of who or what had detained her through the brighter, more exciting ports of Europe, and she didn’t mention it. She hardly spoke. Maybe they
hadn’t
fought and maybe they weren’t still, in some quiet, effortlessly Zen way, fighting right now. One day, people would swab each other with animosity sticks, and there’d be no way to hide it. Just as you could be tested for cancer, you could be tested for fury. Your anger would show, or your resentment, your detachment, your ambivalence, your reduced sexual attraction, no matter what you said or did. Your mood would be a chemical fact and if you lied about it then, poor, poor you. You’d be found out! Looking at Hayley, seeing her radiate, feeling her cozy up against him, it was ridiculously hard—in fact it was impossible—not to feel that this affection that she was suddenly smothering him with was meant for someone else.
    Maybe that person shared his name, and looked like him—the poor fuck—but so what. Hayley wanted a stranger—
you are dead to me,
he wanted to say to himself—and Julian couldn’t help her. Instead of breaking up with your girlfriend, could you break up with
yourself
?
    “So I talked to your dad,” Hayley said.
    “Why?”
    “Well…” She looked at him funny.
    “Because I wanted to know where you were.” She punched him softly in the arm.
    Maybe she wanted to say: play along with this, Julian, please, please, because this is how it works. I am trying so hard right now.
    “You knew exactly where I was,” he said. “I’ve been right here the whole time. I’ve been at the clinic every day for two weeks. Where else would I be?”
    “I wanted to know that you were doing okay, and, you know, where you were staying.”
    “So you asked him?”
    “I knew you’d have been in touch with him.”
    “Yeah.”
    “I can care about you, Julian.”
    “I know you can, Hale.”
    She could care about him in theory, and maybe in real life, too. But he must have migrated to some third place, because both of those territories seemed very far off to him now.
    They crossed the Oberkassel Bridge, where the wind destroyed them, and finally Hayley admitted to being impossibly, horribly cold. And hungry. The poor thing’s nose was running and her face was red and she looked ready to freeze. Could they maybe head back now, she wanted to know? Would he mind so much if they left now?
    “Where?” he said.
    “To the room.”
    “Room? There is no room.” Tombstone.
    “At the Am Volksgarten. You know, where we…They had rooms. I didn’t know where you were and you weren’t checked in